Excellent Kevin. Yes, it is hard to pick on specific companies, but it does help to point out these specific examples. I had the exact same reaction when I received the Outreach e-mail.

Even though churches seldom have the resources of these larger firms, it is very important to have your checklist above in mind and to get a review on the content by someone looking for grammar and spelling issues. I have to admit that I have been guilty of skipping these steps at times too "just to get it out". The point is, that we need to be careful to not get lazy.

That's funny. I just received an e-mail today trying to sell me something. I was interested so I clicked everything in the message that *might* be a link. Turns out there were no links.

I'm interested, but not enough to manually type in your address. Get it right.

I run a few spamfilter systems. There are a number of problems with links in emails.

Most don't realize it, but the vast majority of email is now automatically scanned for spam. Good email gets passed through, 'bad' looking email gets held up.

(on filters I run, 89% of incoming email is spam)

In some systems 'bad' email gets sent to a spam folder for review (ha), but in a corporate environment you can't even do that. One ugly spam and you could have a lawsuit due to a "hostile work environment". It happens. So most of the time it's just dropped, sometimes silently.

None of these systems have reached the self-aware-takeover-skynet level of intellegence needed to truly tell the difference between spam and non-spam. So bypassing these filters for legitimate purposes is kind of an art these days.

One way the filters work is to score an email based on certain things. Links are considered a sign of spam. More links are considered a bigger sign of spam. Throw the phrase "Special offer" in there, and you're headed to the spam bucket.

Another thing is that companies--Vonage for sure--are experiencing real losses due to phishing, so many have a strict policy of no linking in official emails. The thought is that if people know you'll never link, they won't trust a phishing email.

So the reality is that failure to put links in isn't just an oversight. It's on purpose for some valid reasons.

great post!

I say the same thing about church websites.

How do I get there, who are they, what service times.

So often these newsletters and websites are designed around the makers thought process, not for the end viewer.

I've got to agree with Mike --- I'd never sign up for anything by clicking a link on an email. That Vonage deal could be a scam.

What Vonage should have done is tell people how to find their website (not just give a link) and make sure the deal is prominently advertised there.

Putting no links at all in an email seems like a pretty elementary (and counterproductive) solution to spam/phishing problems.

Here's a useful article about avoiding spam filters:

http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/how_spam_filters_think.phtml

Most of our members don't even know what email IS, much less an e-zine.